Its been 75 years since a hard-drinking New Zealand woman named “Granny” McDonald trained the Cup winner.
On that occasion, the trophy was handed to McDonald’s husband as “trainer in name only” due to old Australian rules against licensing females as trainers, jockeys or even strappers.
Yesterday’s winner Gai Waterhouse, who battled officialdom to get her licence back in the 1980s and 90s, became the first Australian woman to train a Cup winner.
And it’s been a long road.
Little more than two decades after she gained her licence and on the 20th anniversary of her first Cup runner, Fiorente lived up to his favouritism in Australia’s greatest race at Flemington.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Waterhouse’s thoughts turned to her late father, TJ Smith, her mentor, hero and role model and the trainer of two Melbourne Cup winners – Toporoa in 1955 and Just A Dash in 1981.
“I thought of Dad this morning and how excited he would be,” Waterhouse said.
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The trainer’s family, husband Rob and children Tom and Kate and daughter-in-law Hoda, celebrated the win with Waterhouse.
“It’s been a burning desire of mine,” she said.
“It’s every trainer’s dream.”
Although she now competes on a level playing field at the races, it wasn’t always the case and Waterhouse is proud of her achievements.
“Of course I’m proud that as a woman I’ve trained the Melbourne Cup winner,” she said.
Waterhouse’s bid for a licence was delayed by a protracted battle with authorities who denied her because her husband was a warned off bookmaker.
She took her case to the highest court and the Waterhouse Amendment to the Sexual Discrimination Act is her legacy with the ruling no-one can be discriminated against because of their spouse.
It’s not the only battle Waterhouse has fought during her career.
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She has been in the headlines a lot this year since a public fall-out with high-profile owner John Singleton.
Waterhouse trained most of Singleton’s racehorses until the glamour mare More Joyous was beaten in the All Aged Stakes during the Sydney autumn racing carnival.
Singleton claimed Waterhouse’s son, the bookmaker Tom Waterhouse, had told rugby league star Andrew Johns that More Joyous couldn’t win the All Aged before the mare ran unplaced in the race.
Since she began training, Waterhouse has racked up around 120 Group One winners.
Rumours have been rife she is moving from Sydney to Melbourne or possibly heading to retirement.
So what ambitions does she have left?
“To become a better grandmother,” she said.
History will record that Waterhouse’s win was the second by a female trainer after Sheila Laxon’s win with Ethereal in 2001.
But the real “first’ sits with New Zealand trainer Hedwick Wilhelmena McDonald who prepared outsider Catalogue in 1938.
“Granny” McDonald, as she was known, had prepared 300 winners, from steeple chases to sprints in New Zealand, but 1930s Australia didn’t allow females to be licensed trainers, track riders or strappers.
When the owners brought the horse over for the Cup it raced as trained by Allan McDonald, Granny’s husband.
Granny was one of the top trainers in New Zealand, yet when the Governor-General Lord Gowrie handed over the trophy, she wasn’t even on the podium.
In Ross Brundrett’s book The Story Of the Melbourne Cup, he writes that Granny “was prone to earthy language, in between bouts of hard drinking and constant smoking. Some say the Melbourne Cup was the making and breaking of ‘Granny’ … a liking for drink got the better of her.”
There might have been a bit of that at Flemington in the latter stages of yesterday’s Cup as 104,000 celebrated Gai’s day.
– with AAP
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